


The Same River Twice

by ishtarelisheba



Series: Better to Face the Bullets 'verse [20]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ish promptathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 21:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15542280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: Rummond goes to fetch Belle from work at the end of her shift and finds himself faced with a young man who reminds him far, far too much of himself when he first arrived at Firefly Hill.





	The Same River Twice

**Author's Note:**

> [Prompt - _Anonymous said: BTFTB prompt! Gold visits Belle at work and stumbles upon a soldier crying that no one will ever love him. Cue Gold talking to him and reminiscing about falling in love with his wife Belle and how she saved him, so there is hope for the soldier._ ]

It was getting too cold in the evenings for Belle to ride her bicycle back and forth to the hospital. Rummond had been debating on going to pick her up despite her protests when he stepped outside and saw his breath on the air. That decided him. 

He left the car near the front steps and went in for her. She’d give him a scolding look, but he would far rather bear that than have her come down with something.

According to Nurse Lind, who was gathering her things to leave, herself, Belle was doing her last round of checks on the wards. He had a thought to wait for her in her office. Before he could make his way down to it, however, the boy crumpled into one of the foyer chairs drew his attention.

The young man was brown-skinned and painfully thin, with long, stark black hair and a rather travel-dusty brown suit. He held his head in his hands and wept quietly. Rummond had a glance at the admission forms that lay on the young man’s lap. _Ala al-Din (Laddy) Qasim. British Army_.

He wondered whether he should say anything to the poor boy, to disturb him. But what would it have meant to him, had someone come to him on that miserable morning he’d dragged himself into the hospital, and given him a few kind words? 

He sat down in the chair next to the boy. It took him a while to work out what to say.

“I’ve been precisely where you are,” he said gently, and the boy startled, anyway. “One chair over, in fact. Just here.”

And it took a while, as well, for the boy to respond, breathing and struggling to compose himself first. 

“You’re a patient?” Laddy asked in a lightly accented English that Rummond pegged as being from quite East, plus some many years. 

“Was, once. Not too long ago.” Rummond settled his cane between his knees. “Met my wife here, matter of fact. I’m waiting for her shift to finish. She’s head nurse, now,” he said proudly.

“I have a wife. Yasmin,” the boy shared. “She doesn’t know I’ve come here. She doesn’t know I’ve come to _this.”_ The misery on Laddy’s face deepened.

“You don’t think she’d wish to be here with you?” Rummond asked.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid she’d be done with me.”

Rummond let the boy sit for a few minutes while he considered. “You’ve been in a bad way for a long while, haven’t you?”

Laddy shrank in on himself a bit, nodding.

“How has she handled it?” Rummond went on.

“Yasmin is a good woman. She has a kind heart. She’s never been anything less than that. But there is only so much someone can take before they’re pushed too far, isn’t there?”

“Has she given you reason to think she’d put you aside?”

“She’s been only kind. She’s tolerated everything. I don’t know how. Why.” Laddy wiped at his cheeks and laced his hands together so tightly they must have hurt. “Goodness knows she can’t feel as she did when she married me.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain about that,” Rummond told him. “If she’s stayed by you all this time, then what is it that makes you think she would change because you’re seeking help here?”

Laddy was at a loss, his mouth left open, quite visibly turning the thought over. Rummond could so easily imagine what things the boy’s mind had been telling him. He knew from long experience that sometimes it took an outside voice to bring things back into even a momentary focus.

He let Laddy see him move before placing a careful hand on the boy’s shoulder. There was still a flinch. “Just over there, there’s a telephone at the desk. The night nurse will be in before long. Do yourself - and your wife - a favor and call her before they give you a bed?”

The young man looked thoughtful for a while longer. “You think I should?”

“I truly do,” Rummond counseled with a firm nod. 

Laddy nodded in return. “I’ll… I should. I should tell her. She deserves to know.”

Ruby arrived for the night shift and Nurse Lind filled her in on the state of things before leaving, and Laddy finished filling in his admission form with a shaking hand. The boy took his paperwork up, handing it off to Ruby.

“I’ll have Mr. Muis come and do your intake in just a moment,” she said, her smile warm.

The boy started to turn back for the chairs, but Rummond caught his eye, glancing toward the desk again.

“Nurse?” Laddy said softly, turning to her again. “Would- that is, do you think it might be all right if I used your telephone there to call my wife?”

“Of course it would!” she said, beckoning him. “Here, come around and I’ll get her for you.”

Rummond heard his own wife’s footsteps, then her office door. A few moments later, she was heading up the corridor to him with an armful of files and paperwork that he knew would be spread out on the floor in the sitting room for at least an hour before they could go to bed tonight. He simply smiled and stood to meet her. She gave him a most exasperated look before smiling in return.

“Yasmin?” he heard Laddy say before breaking down into sobs.

Belle paused, looking back on their way out. “We’ve a new patient for the east ward, I gather?” she whispered to her husband. 

“You do. He’s in a bad way, that boy. Came in alone,” Rummond said quietly. “Though I’ve a feeling he won’t be by morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> (Takes place around early November right after Belle and Rummond married.)


End file.
